Mealey Publications™
TOP STORIES
SAN FRANCISCO — Meta Platforms Inc.’s “false dichotomy” about the possible answers regarding its use of copyrighted material in an artificial intelligence case is based on minor quibbles about the extent of the copying and does not “justify the hopelessly vague” answers it offered about what its search of the training data revealed, a federal magistrate judge in California said Jan. 17 in partially granting motions to compel.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Orders by the Federal Communications Commission and other agencies that interpret federal statutes do not under the Hobbs Act need to be treated by trial courts as binding precedent, and instead direct review should be conducted in the courts of appeals, the attorney representing a chiropractic practice argued today before the U.S. Supreme Court in the appeal of a Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) class case while citing Carlton & Harris Chiropractic, Inc. v. PDR Network, LLC.
SAN FRANCISCO — Hydraulic fracturing proponents who sued the Biden administration over the delay caused by a temporary halt of the hydraulic fracturing lease program in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska moved in the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals to dismiss their appeal on Jan. 20 on grounds that the final record of decision (ROD) for ANWR’s Coastal Plain Oil and Gas Program issued by the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) on Dec. 8 “completed DOI’s supplemental environmental review and expressly lifts the Moratorium for the oil and gas program rendering all claims in this appeal moot.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 21 heard oral arguments in a petition brought by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services and their respective secretaries (collectively, FDA) who argue that the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has improperly allowed “forum shopping” by permitting out-of-circuit e-cigarette manufacturers to challenge federal regulations in the circuit of local retailers with more appealing precedents.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — President Donald J. Trump on Jan. 20 issued an executive order requiring the U.S. attorney general not to enforce for 75 days the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which, if enforced on its effective date of Jan. 19, would have resulted in a ban on popular social network TikTok absent a corporate ownership change.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — A federal judge in Connecticut on Jan. 21 entered judgment in favor of an insurer after granting its motion for summary judgment in its declaratory judgment lawsuit disputing coverage for the insured’s claim for losses arising from an exploding lamp that caused fire damage to 998 marijuana plants, concluding that there is no coverage owed because the insured’s loss did not result from a suspension of its operations.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Shortly after the inauguration on Jan. 20, Donald J. Trump and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) were sued in a federal court in the District of Columbia by a government employees union and two nonprofits that allege that the formation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) on Jan. 17 sued three U.S. agencies in a District of Columbia federal court over Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA or Parity Act) final rules released in September, which it argues upend “the regulatory and compliance framework that has evolved over decades pursuant to the limits established by Congress” and impose “entirely new, ambiguous requirements.”
HONOLULU — An amicus curiae group called the “Consolidated Class Plaintiffs” will take part in Feb. 6 oral argument after the Hawaii Supreme Court expanded the time allotted in the case concerning reserved questions on how the subrogation rights of property and casualty insurance carriers bear on a proposed global settlement of claims related to the August 2023 Maui wildfires; additionally, a pending opposed motion seeks to stay a lower court’s allocation proceeding.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 17 held that provisions of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act do not violate the First Amendment rights of petitioners TikTok Inc. and Tik Tok creators and a nonprofit seeking to stop the enforcement of the law that promises to ban the social network on Jan. 19 absent a corporate ownership change, finding that the act’s challenged provisions “further an important Government interest unrelated to the suppression of free expression and do not burden substantially more speech than necessary to further that interest.”
DETROIT — A Michigan federal jury on Jan. 16 awarded $133,000 to a former employee of a resort after determining that his refusal to take the COVID-19 vaccine was based on a sincerely held religious belief and that the resort failed to prove that accommodating the employee’s religious beliefs would have caused it to suffer an undue hardship.